I'm not a pipeline expert, but I've been doing computers sense the early 90s. You have a pipe. It has pumps and valves. You have a computer that controls it all. The computer gets hacked. UNPLUG THE DAM COMPUTER... and plug in another one. Then restart the pumps. If they are too incompetent to figure out a workaround then get the hell out of the way and let someone else try.
If there is one thing I've learned with computers its that the guy at the console is god. There is no such thing as taking over from a remote location. Anyone that tells you differently has been watching too many movies. Send real actual human beings out the the pumps, unplug the dam computer and just turn the pump on manually. Yeah, a person might have to watch the pressure and flow rates etc rather than the computer. So the hell what. Get the dam gas flowing again morons.
more to it than simply flipping a switch. Halt of one element in petroleum production/transport capable of halting everything from start to finish. Petroleum production industry has little to no overflow capacity. Meaning? one domino falls, all the rest follow, to restart, dominos must be stood back up one by one. Further complication, dominos must be stood back up in the correct order, or gaps occur in the system, when gaps occur, not all elements can idle and wait. Some elements must shut down when no product available to process/transport, and shutdown of one element means next in line must shutdown and wait or idle as well, until product fills the gap.
Petroleum production system highly complex, highly interconnected, and highly resource/time intensive to shutdown/restart.
Yeah, I do get what you're saying. I just find it hard to believe that some hacker accesses one or two systems which causes a shutdown out of security concerns... fine great... but then people are talking about should we pay a ransom? How long will it be before its back up? Then people start panic buying and its not back up after days...
Nah. I call BS. No computer is that critical. No computer is un-replaceable. If that's how their system works then its a flawed system. Yeah, they have to double check things blah blah... bring in extra people.
I'm just not buying it. If someone damaged or an accident had physically damaged a pipe or a pump sure, it takes time to replace things physically, but a computer hack, nah they should be able to fix that in hours maybe days tops.
Also maybe they should make more storage and build more pipes etc.
Check information. Pipeline in question utilizes computer operating system which is extremely old, outdated technology easy to hack. No up to date support. No patching. No security updates. OS name as ive heard. Cobalt.
"critical infrastructure" described so very well. SMH...
If it's shut down long enough yes. But a temporary interruption can not cause that domino effect.